“We had the race of our lives.”he said Tommaso Brugnami at the end of the junior men’s qualifications at 36th European Championship on stage at the Rimini Fair. And it’s true because the Italians, after two subdivisions, look at everyone from top to bottom and dominate the provisional ranking with a total of 240,230. The captain of the Italbaby, together with his companions Manuel Beretta, Diego Vazzola, Pietro Mazzola And Simone Speranza they concluded a practically flawless race, managing to put the arrow on their direct rivals from France, who however remained behind at 238,796. Now fingers crossed waiting for the “final whistle”, in the third and final subdivision there is another formidable opponent, Great Britain. The boys led by the head of the national youth team Nicola Costa, supported by the coaches Fabrizio Marcotullio, Corrado Corti and Pietro Matias Bani, truly gave everything and – under no circumstances – will they have any regrets. They started from the horse with handles and having brushed the most difficult tool gave it a crazy boost. The same can be said for the rotation of the rings. We had to hold our breath a bit on the vault, thanks to Betterera’s mistake, but Speranza’s last jump saved everything: the strength of the team. The parallel bars suffered, but the Azzurri did well to hold on, raising the level even further on the bar, where a few tenths too many went away on the exits. Throughout the Olympic tour, France’s rivals turned to the next apparatus. And everything was decided in the last rotation: the transalpines closed the pommel horse, where they didn’t shine, while Brugnami & Co. threw their heart over the obstacle on the free body square. Four crazy exercises, it wouldn’t even have been necessary to discard one to set the tone and settle at the top of the rankings.
There will be hours of difficult waiting, until 7.00 pm, when the race will end and the European champion team will be crowned. A title that belongs precisely to Italy from the continental review of Monaco 2022. Meanwhile at Casa Italia, the Federginnastica stand in the Rimini exhibition centre, the party has started because a performance like this should still be celebrated. Everyone was there among photos, chants and congratulations. The boys’ families, friends, teammates from their respective clubs and even the national team gymnasts. The Super Tommy fan club arrived from the Marche region, with a celebratory shirt depicting “Piumino” in Superman version; from Lombardy the supporters of Maz, Vaz and Berry; without forgetting the Speranza fans from Sicily. A surname that, on this afternoon in Romagna, everyone hopes will be a good omen.
Meanwhile, congratulations have arrived from the federal management present in Rimini, from the president Gherardo Tecchi to the general secretary Roberto Pentrella, to a gymnastics legend like our Olympian Gianfranco Marzolla who attended the competition together with the GAM technical director Giuseppe Cocciaro, to the team manager Andrea Facci, to the vice-presidents Valter Peroni and Rosario Pitton, to the federal councilors Franco Mantero and Vittorio Massucchi.
